#230 #231 #232 A bunch of clown fish 10/20/19 thru 10/22/19

The clown fish make me happy, so I decided I would make a series.  I stopped by Howard's Art Supply, to check to see how my donation was doing bid-wise (it was still at $35, with one more day to go) and while I was there I decided to get a few more Ampersand boards.  After working again with these, I've decided I'm not a fan.  If I were more direct with my brushstrokes, I might be a fan, but uggggh, these painting took it out of me.  I put down the fish on all 3 the first night.  They looked adorable and I was feeling good about it.  The next two nights I added the backgrounds....uggggh, that's what took it out of me.  The paint smears so dang easily.  On a canvas surface the ridges must provide just enough of a barrier to prevent (most) smears.  So I ended up dinking with my previously perfectly adorable fish and now I don't find them nearly as adorable.  The photo of the paintings seems to highlight the horrible brushwork.  I spent HOURS and HOURS trying to get them acceptable, without success.  The only one I like is the one that I elected to keep the background water-only.  Uggggh.

#229 Sunflower 10/17/19

Another larger-than-most painting, 7x9 inches.  I got the most gorgeous sunflowers at the Farmer's Market over the summer, and took lots of photos of them.  I decided tonight to finally paint one of those photos.  All the ones that included the vase looked weird.  The flowers are over-sized, making the vase look undersized, causing the whole still-life portrait to just look off-kilter.  So I did a close up.  But the close-up had the flower facing down, sunflowers need to face the sun....so I rotated it.  The painting went easy, I only put a few colors on the palette and went to town.  I started with the center, easily deciding that painting the pattern of seeds would lead me to cry, so I didn't even go down that road.  I did try to put in some dramatic colors though: purples and reds.  The petals seemed very straightforward.  The background was minimal....greens as the bottom and a bit of blue sky at the top.  Boom, I was done.  My reaction every time I look at it?  Yuck.  The style I was going for is missing.  I don't think it's a bad painting, it's just not what I intended.  Maybe I should have painted the seed pattern after all.  Oh well....try, try again. 

#228 Red Converse Sneaks 10/16/19

The last of the shoe pics that were picked to paint.  More laced sneakers.  I've decided the easiest way to go about the laces is to paint everything else first, that way the laces are easier to track, what part is on top and what part is below and what part needs a shadow shade and what part needs a highlight.  The background on this one was just what kind of paint I had on the palette....you'd think I would be more calculating than that.  The pic is one taken from pexels, of course.  I like how this painting turned out.  I started with low expectations and moved along systematically, finishing in a reasonable amount of time, calm and serene through the whole thing.  The photo of my painting is causing some angst though - too much glare!

#224 thru #227 More Birds 10/14/19

I worked on some hens tonight....thought I should round out the family, so there's a rooster, a chick and two hens now.  I'm thinking I should call the hen painting "the girls".  A few weeks ago at the Farmer's Market, one of the vendors was telling a story and mentioned that her girls poop all over the eggs when it's rainy....and another vendor had a look of horror on her face and said, "your girls do what??"  The other vendor said, "not my children, my girls are my hens!"

All of the birds went along fairly easy tonight....got all 4 down in one evening, however I did get to bed pretty late!  I selected a guinea hen to paint, only because a customer at the Farmer's Market was looking at the tiny easel paintings and remarked that if I had a guinea, she would buy it, as she just loves her guinea hens.  When I googled them, I was a bit taken aback as I didn't realize quite how odd their heads were.  I thought perhaps I had googled some sort of weird Amazon version of a Guinea, but all the images looked the same.  So, there's a Guinea Hen available, should that woman come back to the Market!

And two more robins, because everybody loves robins!!!

#222 and #223 Chick and Rooster 10/13/19

This duo is ripe for a joke, so here it is: Which came first, the chicken or the egg?  (It had to happen.)  In this case the honest answer is: The egg.  More honesty, I didn't intend to bring these two together for the joke.  I intended to paint two birds.  I opened up my "bird" file and chose these two because I was weary of songbirds.  And it just occurred to me as I typed in the title of the post, "hmmm, I've got a chick and an chicken, weird, is that a chicken or rooster, umm technically a rooster is a chicken, but definitely a rooster, oh but wait, I've got an egg too, I could title it with the world's most eternal joke!"  Enough about that.

What's different about these two is that they are painted on Ampersand boards instead of canvases.  I sprung the big bucks for two 4 inch ampersand boards while at Howard's for the big "gallery opening".  (BTW, the silent auction on the painting donations will finish this weekend....I'll be checking to see where my Appalachian Trail entry is in the bidding on Friday after work.)  The ampersand: very, very smooth.  The paint just glided on.  Like black ice.  I thought oh no, the paint will glide off just as easily!  Once I felt that glide, I anticipated having a big mess of brown paint falling off the edges given how I put paint down.  I'm used to the canvas fighting me a bit.  I usually need to be forceful to get the paint to leave the brush and get into all the nooks and crannies.  I started therefore with a very delicate hand, fearful of the risk of slipping.  But the ampersand worked out ok.  The paint stayed put, and I'm content with the outcome of each.

#222 Hatchling

#223 Free Range Rooster

#221 Black Heels 10/10/19

Another pair of heels. Full disclosure, I cannot wear heels.  They just kill my feet.  And when I see "professional women" (full disclosure, yes I saw the double meaning there and elected to keep it) I marvel at their ability to walk and not wince or stumble or break an ankle.  They are almost like specialty athletes in my eyes, like one might view a pole vaulter.  Perhaps one day we'll view high heels like we do corsets now.....women willing to suffer silently for fashion.  Regardless, I like how my black heels turned out.  Yes, the photo I worked from were red heels, but I had already done red heels, so I changed them to black, my artistic license.  I elected to put purple down on the palette before I even started, knowing that I wanted the "realism" of the black color to happen with purple.  I used to make glass beads, and when you strung out black glass thinly over a white glass surface it would appear purple.  Black glass is actually really dark purple.  So that is likely why I started with the purple plan.  I ended up sticking with the purple plan too!  I'm not sure if I'm going to be the only eyes that see the shoes as black though....the rest of the world may just see these as purple shoes.

#220 All-Stars 10/9/19

OK, my plan to paint laced shoes in under an hour was a colossal failure.  I got all BUT the laces painted in under an hour, but then spent over an hour JUST on the laces.  Finally giving up and giving in to the idea that they were "stylized" laces...some parts looked real which allowed the rest of the unreal parts to be forgiven, overlooked. My favorite part of the painting is the background, perhaps because we just started with some cooler temperatures and Fall is on the mind, and the orange and brown looks Fall-ish.  I used prussian blue for the shoe canvas, and all of my white parts ended up tinted with the blue, which I think works ok because if they were white-white they'd look out of place.  Not sure if I'll continue to mess with this one tomorrow, I may just need to move on from laced shoes.